New front Propshaft and transmission fluid

Long rebuild and lots of welding said that things mechanically should be fine now the structure is sound.

Guess again fat boi!!!

I found that there was a bit of vibration from the front end at around 45mph to 55mph 😞😞

I picked up a new wide angle prop shaft and set about getting it fitted.

Fit the new one up, you will see that I have fitted the nuts but as I wound them on one by one it was my effort to pull them all up equally and evenly.

Where as the transfer box end sees the bolt heads held captive against the output flange and only requires the use of a spanner to tighten the nuts on the bolts but the diff input shaft requires at least two spanners or a socket and a spanner to nip them up.

All fitted up and the bolts all nipped up.

Here you can see the old prop shaft, it is a solid bar type that you would ordinarily find on a V8 engined vehicle because this originally came off my old 3.9 V8 Discovery, the solid bar was used as a means of avoiding the catalytic converters but I have moved back to a regular tubular prop shaft.

I figured that I ought change out the transmission fluid as it's been in there a while and I need to do the axles as well but that is for a whole other day lol.

What can I say, it was rank and rancid, badly contaminated with water and emulsified.  How did that happen I wonder?  Well what happened was, when I refitted the front wing with the snorkel on I hadn't noticed that the extended breather had slipped out of the cable clips and had rested in the roof gutter, all that rain that we had has found it's way in there and made a mess.

First thing you must do with any fluid replacement is to remove the filler plug, found on the right hand side of the gearbox half way up, 13mm open ended spanner is perfect.

I found out by surprise that the gearbox was over full when the fluid shot out the filler hole and down the sleeve of my boiler suit.

On the bottom of the box is the big 32mm drain plug with magnet on it and behind the cross member there is the transmission screen filter.

This is the goop in the drain pot.

This is the transmission screen filter as it came out, it was disgusting.

The crap all over it was some sort of varnish or paint.

As it was so rank I decided that I would flush it through a bit and popped the plugs back in and put a litre of oil back in and with the transfer box in neutral I popped it in 4th gear and let it run a while and then drained it through.

Still looked like this, purple-ish but not grey and stinking like before.

So I put the plugs back in and fulled it up, I have a 400 mile round trip to do  and will drain it out and replace it when I get back.

Thanks for looking.

Tidying up some wiring.

As with most modified vehicles, they get additional electrics.

I added a second alternator to give me stand alone power supply to my winch and auxiliary circuits.

Installation of the dual alternator kit can be found here Dual Alternator Fitting

I looked at lots of potential solutions and found a combination relay and fuse box that pretty much fitted my needs exactly.

Very time consuming work to build it all up but very satisfying.

I routed the 35mmsq cable up to a connection box where I split the cables down to the fuse supplies and relays.

Gotta have a legend, can't fault find if you don't have any means of knowing what goes where and what colour wire goes to what supply.

Here it is in the engine bay all fitted up and the cables routed to my liking, very functional and much better than janky old individual relay holders screwed all over with self tapping screws and having to try and remember what it does and where the power feeds come from.

All works as it should and I will no doubt have more to fit as more accessories are fitted over time.

Back seats for the first time in decades

When I bought Rusty back in 2012 we lived in Belgium, it was very common to find 4x4s converted into "lichtevrachtwagen" which translated into English is light commercial vehicle with only the two front seats and a bulkhead behind to segregate the load bay from the cab.

You can just make out the silver of the aluminium bulkhead in the centre of the truck.

Well over a year ago my girlfriend found a seat of back seats for sale on a facebook group, made an offer and off we went to East Sussex to fetch them.

Quick test fit of the first single seat just to get a feel for them.

needless to say, I'm happy.

The seats are ordinarily held down to the floor pan with M6 bolts into captive nuts in the floor itself, these have not had seats fitted and the people who removed the seats just left the bolt holes empty so they ended up rusted out, I ran a thread cleaning tap through them first and when I put bolts in the threads pretty much instantly stripped out.  Hey ho, drill out to 1/4" imperial and then tap them out to M8, job jobbed.

Both seats all fitted up and folded while I fit the seat back catches and the seat belts.

You can see the little black latch box on the side at the C pillar, these both had to be fettled a little to get them to fit after the mammoth rear end rebuild, things were not quite an exact fit and needed 10mm trimmed off the bottom, no drama, that's why we own a grinder lol.

Other side seat belt fitted and just getting the latch box trimmed to fit.

After it was all fitted and ready, it was time to go out on the first day of the new year to go have new years day dinner with mum.

Proper family outing with baby and puppies.

Thanks for looking.